


The DARK WORLD - Alfheim

by Lyzaander



Series: Digital Love [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Gen, Slow Build, Virtual Reality, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-10
Updated: 2014-03-19
Packaged: 2018-01-11 20:47:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 6,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1177745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyzaander/pseuds/Lyzaander
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She loves the sights that lie between reality and imagination. Nothing can hurt her here. She can walk the whole of the Nine Realms, and yet not move a single step from where she is.</p><p>The DARK WORLD... is a beautiful place to get away from nightmares. </p><p>Inspired by Sword Art Online.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Solo Dive

There. Everything is complete. Her assignments are done, and there are no outstanding chores left. Her teeth are squeaky clean. Her gaze slides to the object placed at her bedside table, and Jane slips into bed and slides on the helmet.

_**< <Please set your notification preference.>>** _

Jane sets the alarm. She’ll wake up with plenty of time to get ready for her classes tomorrow.

_**< <Logging in. Please wait.>>** _

There are various screens that pop out in the blank canvas before her, and they quickly turn green before disappearing just as fast. The headgear linking up her consciousness to the server is one of the finest models, something that Tony had shoved into her hands once Darcy had bragged to the clique that she had gotten -tricked actually- Jane into the virtual system. He’d offered her help in the game, but Pepper had sternly warned him against giving others unfair advantages in the game that the Stark Group owned. Jane had agreed.

Jane cannot deny that her heart beats a little faster at the thought of visiting the Dark World alone (Darcy’s been buried by an avalanche of neglected coursework). The experience of her first Dive into the virtual world had been soured by the fact that she had lost a bet to Darcy, and then been subsequently tricked into joining the VRMMORPG. The world had been amazing - the duplication of sensory input into the system was unlike what Jane had expected - and Darcy’s smug face had accompanied her long after logging out.

The next few days had been short tutorial Dives with her best friend, with Darcy showing her the tricks and trades of surviving the Dark World - hunting strange yet Earth-like creatures and completing silly quests.

_**< <Welcome, JANE.>>** _

She taps the welcome notice closed, and the black quickly melts away to reveal Midgard. It’s modelled after Medieval Earth, with a liberal application of fantastical creatures from all sorts of mythology. And this is merely one of the Nine Realms of Yggdrasil - Midgard is the Realm that all beginner VRMMORPGers are recommended to start off with - it is the least confusing of the Nine.

Her friend has several characters, and cycles through them with an extremely efficient levelling up scheme. What equipment that Jane has are hand-me-downs from Darcy, and Jane has to admit that the items are immensely helpful - she’s a ‘pitiable’ Level 5 in the beginning town of Agueten Point (it’s an anagram of some real place, or so Darcy says).

Jane walks toward the teleportation point, discreetly gawking at some of the characters from other Realms - there’s something that looks like a bipedal swamp creature skulking about, and he/she has hair something like pink peacock feathers.

Everything is incredibly vivid, and Jane looks up into the sky. The constellations of the the real world can be seen even in daylight, and beyond them, she can see the hulking shadows of the other Realms.

Jane spends the night Lucid-Dreaming. The helmet is designed for that. She guesses that she owes Tony a favor - probably has to sign some of the class attendances for him now.

Even if most of it is spent on ‘grinding’, it’s a beautiful place to get away from nightmares.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> VRMMORPG - Virtual Reality Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game  
> Grinding - levelling up a character


	2. Progress

**_< <Logging in. Please wait.>>_ **

**_< <Welcome, JANE.>>_ **

**_< <You have ONE new message.>>_ **

_< polsci_ROX - (DARCY)>_

**_-_ ** _Hey Janey-Jane. Tony and I are off hunting in the dungeons. Send us a message if you wanna kill giant vampire bats, okay?_

She kills the message dialog box after a short acknowledgement. She’s not too fond of charity - her friends are much too highly-leveled to be killing low-level monsters just to help her.

_***---***_

**_< <Logging in. Please wait.>>_ **

**_< <Welcome, JANE.>>_ **

The forest that Jane wanders in is relatively safe - the monsters here are for starter players to get to a maximum of Level 3 before levelling up becomes incredibly hard with such weak monsters.

Jane has a somewhat impressive inventory and character build at Level 10 now, a sort of cross between a Daemonologist and a Cleric, which Tony and Darcy approve of wholeheartedly. She’s seen them exchange high-fives each time that she levels whilst under their Party.

Tony is a somewhat flashy Knight - all gold and red armor - while Darcy switches between both her darkly dressed Mage and War Elf characters. Pepper doesn’t play, but Natasha and Clint do. They’re an inseparable pair of  Assasins training to be Shadow Lords.

She travels a little further where the monsters are at a maximum of Level 10, sets up her barrier and sends her summoned monsters to fight. Watches as Muspelheim travels, glowing slightly against the glow of the stars.

It’s quiet here.

Just how she likes it.

**_< <Congratulations, JANE. You have an item drop.>>_ **

It’s a small fang, and she stores it in her inventory with the other nine-hundred-odd others, all identical. These are quest items, and will sell for a hefty amount of tákn. Pretty soon she’ll be able to raise enough in-game currency to travel Yggdrasil - Tony’s already traveled enough to travel for free on his ‘teleportation miles’.

***---***

Class is about to resume, and Tony chooses that moment to slide in next to her. He’s remarkably late, coming halfway into the lesson.

“Heeeey. Foster, babe,” Tony drawls, and Jane cannot help a smile at the ruffled mess of hair that the billionaire heir sports.

“Hi, Tony. Been up late again huh?”

“Yeah. Been chasing those bugs that you reported. Thanks for the heads up. And the attendance thing that you’ve been doing too. Pepper was surprised that I haven’t been getting as many absentee warnings as I should.”

“It’s the least I could do, really. For the gear.”

“Nah, don’t sweat it. You’ve already paid it off with the hundreds of bug reports. It really saves us a lot of downtime. I’d have to clock overtime searching instead of trying to fix those pesky bugs.”

Class starts, and Tony plants his head into his folded arms. Everybody in this school knows that Tony doesn’t need to actually study to ace any test, but the system here is a stickler for physical presence in the school.

_***---***_

**_< <Congratulations, JANE. You have leveled up to LEVEL 25.>>_ **

Jane smiles, and watches as her daemon companion does a little jiggle in celebration of her new level status. Darcy’s been giving her tons of advice and help, and her best friend will be a little mad that Jane’s reached a milestone level without her.

The daemon fades away while she rifles through her inventory. Jane doesn’t need to renew the active skill for protection - she’s warping back to the Capitol. It’s time to leave Midgard finally, and journey to explore another Realm.

**_< <Returning to Capitol. Please wait.>>_ **


	3. Guardian

Her intercom beeps, and Jane sets the commands to the system to bring her back into the server.

**_< <Switching in now. Please wait.>>_ **

One thing about the _Dark World_ is that travelling via warp or teleportation is pretty much instantaneous, but inter-Realm travel takes a little longer. There’s a queue in each Realm; Tony had explained the difficulty in handling data transfers between the servers (apparently, each Realm has an independent server _and_ a backup server, minimizing downtime).

She’s been on standby in the _Dark World_ , doing some extra research for her next destination whilst waiting for her turn. She’s headed for Álfheim where the Light Elves live, but in actuality it’s two sub-worlds in a single destination. Svartálfheim has been described as a photonegative world to Álfheim. ‘Two sides of a coin,’ Darcy had described to Jane when she asked about the difference between the Elven Mage and War Elf character builds.

**_< <Welcome, JANE.>>_ **

 

The Gate Guardian is _impressive_ , several feet of dark skin and gold armour. All the NPCs here are powered by STARKtech's brand of Artificial Intelligence, and Darcy swears that Heimdall has a remarkably wicked sense of humour. Heimdall stands in all Nine Realms, and his backstory claims that he sees all - just like in Nordic mythology. Jane figures that he is one super-processor overseeing _all_ the transfers between all Realms, but she’ll have to ask Tony in order to confirm her theories.

He turns eyes of molten gold upon her, and Jane thinks that she can see every detail of his iris.

 **“Hello, Lady Stjörnur. Finally geared up for the Realms?”** his voice is a bass-filled rumble that resounds all throughout the dome, and his pronunciation of her username is spot on. That's a point in STARKtech's high score there; everything surpasses expectation.

“Well, I wouldn’t be here if it was otherwise,” Jane mumbles to herself while selecting the Realm of her choice.

 **“Very well, little one. At least your sass is not unbecoming like the Lady Darcy. See you later, Lady Jane.”** Jane gapes at Heimdall and his knowledge of her, and all she sees is his wide smile and wink before a rainbow of lights cut off all vision.

**_< <Welcome to Majuscula, JANE.>>_ **

The dome all around the notification window is the same, as is Heimdall. She gets rid of the dialog box hovering in front of her, and summarily gets her breath taken away by the unending acres of green and umber and sunshine. The trees here are huge, and Jane sees what seems to be _entire houses_ hanging from the great branches.

She hears a chuckle, and remembers to wave to Heimdall before walking in a daze out the great doors.

It’s unbelievable - but the tiny streams of sunlight that escape from the encompassing sky of green leaves overhead warm her skin - and it feels so real.

**_< <You have ONE new message.>>_ **

_< polsci_ROX - (DARCY)>_

**_-_ ** _You sneaky little… you made it to Álfheim without telling me! You’re so dead when I see you in school tomorrow. Heimdall’s a bit slow on clearing the massive queue, and I think I'll clear the waitlist tomorrow._

Jane laughs at the message, sending nothing but a smiley face in return, and then her alarm rings.

 

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NPC (wiki definition) - A non-player character (NPC), sometimes known as a non-person character or non-playable character, in a game is any character that is not controlled by a player. In electronic games, this usually means a character controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence.
> 
> Stjörnur - 'Star' in Icelandic


	4. Summon

**_< <Logging in. Please wait.>>_ **

**_< <Welcome, JANE.>>_ **

Someone surges right in front of her, “Been waitin’ _ages_ for you, honey. C’mon, the rest of us are waiting on our medic and area buffer.”

Jane turns her head, looking at the leather armoured hand on her shoulder that pushes her forward, “Tony? What happened to the-”

“Looks like you and I both miss the metal, huh. But we can’t hunt worth a damn with my armour on. The pure iron armour ain’t too hot with the wildlife here.”

Oh, right. She’d forgotten that the creatures of each Realm had their own characteristics. Álfheim is a realm mostly comprised of a massive root system of trees, and it doesn’t take too kindly to pure metal. What works here are either organic weapons or alloy materials. Adamantium is the only proven pure metal to work here, but Tony’s hidden Gamemaster status cannot afford to be exposed with a full suit of the most expensive metal available in-game, much less an Adamantium sword.

Jane laughs, “Looks like your username isn’t too accurate right now.” The leather armour is, however, in the usual style; the gold merely replaced by black. He cuts a wicked figure in the sunwashed landscape of Álfheim.

Tony chuckles, “Pepper’s reaction was already bad enough when she knew. ‘ _Leatherman_ ’ is definitely a deal breaker here.”

***---***

Jane looks about her to make sure that it’s all clear before chancing a glance at the status bar at the top left of her vision. Her daemon minion still has quite a bit of ‘shelf life’, and the two assassins are fine but Darcy’s health bar is a little on the low side.

**_[HEAL casted.]_ **

“Thanks, Janey,” Darcy shouts as she… de-legs a giant furred centipede. Natasha drives her shortblade into the skull cavity to deal a Fatal, and the beast goes down. She gets a fair bit of cash and experience when it shatters into fragmented data, and then some more as she heals the rest of the party back to full health.

**_[[PARTY: ONE new message.]]_**

_< IRONMAN - (TONY)>_

**_-_ ** _I’m up front. Found ourselves a sweet hidden room. Trace my location from the console._

They reach their party leader, and the lack of smart quips from each other is quite telling. The room isn’t ‘sweet’ by any terms. It’s _loaded_ with items.

“ _Whoa_ , Tony. Is this like the Room of Requirement thingy in the books?” Clint’s voice is a bit dazed as he eyes a wicked crossbow decked with evil-looking thorns.

“I really don’t know. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and I certainly didn’t code an entire MMORPG universe by myself. We’ve got a massive team of game devs,coders and gamemasters, and all of them are bound to an ethics code of fairness. That being said, I’ll have to report this to the team. Sorry guys.”

“Well, I call ‘finders keepers’ to be a code of fairness,” Darcy retorts, and everyone agrees to take just one item. Tony says that its fair payment for the Easter Egg discovery.

Natasha picks a pair of identical Daggers, and is pleased to find that the weapon has been embedded with a Poison Status Inflict. Clint’s Crossbow is perfect for an assassin - the range is top notch but not unfair - but he can’t use it yet because of the level requirements. Darcy’s picked a Skill Bracelet that funnily enough, electrifies people to inflict temporary paralysis.

Tony’s eyeing an Equip item that allows him to shoot energy bolts from his palms, and Jane is quite undecided. All of these are items that don’t really suit her need. There is armour that is light yet powerful, but she’ll outgrow the level limit too fast.

“Jane,” Natasha’s voice cuts through, “I think that you should take a look at this.”

It’s a skill book, and Jane reads the brief description to see if its what she needs.

 **[SKILL BOOK found. SUMMON** allows the retrieval of physical non-immortal objects. LEVEL ONE: summon objects from distance of 10. **]**

It’s a useful skill, to be able to retrieve items out of her protection barrier (even further out of her immediate reach). And the fact that it’s an upgradable skill is good.

**[Learn SUMMON?] <YES  /  NO >**

She swipes at the yes button. The book disappears into a stream of light that travels up her arm.

They never see that room again.

***---***

“Hey Jane.” It’s Pepper, looking as beautiful as ever, and sliding in next to her like she’s never been away for months on an exchange programme in New York.

“Pepper, it’s good to see you!” Jane laughs as they share a one-armed hug.

“Tony drove you up the wall, huh.” They share a giggle over Pepper’s deadpan statement, and class starts.

***---***

Tony’s sentence isn’t quite making sense, “so… the headgear reads minds?”

They’re making their way Tony’s basement, which is basically a STARKtech laboratory. She’s thought long and hard about the offer that both Tony and Pepper have offered - a freelance contract to monitor and report any odd conditions within the _Dark World_. It offers a lot more than compensation, and Jane is thrilled to learn more about the (confidential) inner workings of the server systems.

She hasn’t been here since… well, his parents died. Tony’s shaking his head in response to her questions.

“No, no, no, honey. Reading minds is impossible even with the scanners under advanced development. Remember the prerequisite calibration checks and tutorials? Those measure the reaction responses from the individual - reaction time, emotional responses, verbal feedback and body language.”

“Okay… So the game operates by re-routing the brain-to-muscle response to brain-to-system-command? And the reaction responses are a feedback loop to adjust the difficulty of the game to the individual...” There has got to be a reason why she doesn’t dodge incoming monsters and _not_ fall off the bed.

“ _Oh yes. Finally_ we’re speaking English now, Foster.” Tony enters the passcode with a flourish, and makes sure that Jane memorises the code too. This lab will be their operation zone from now on.

|| _It’s been a while since I last saw you, Jane._ ||

The address is entirely friendly, and Jane suddenly recalls Tony fiddling with some modular system and searching for voice tapes. It’d been a long while back.

“... JARVIS?”

Tony groans.

|| _I reckon that I’ve won the wager, sir._ ||

Jane gives a surprised laugh - Tony’s come a long way since the scrolling text marquees of his prototype ten years ago.

“It’s nice to be back, JARVIS.”


	5. Different

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The good ol' captain and his lady for a brief interlude.

He feels like he doesn’t belong to this time and age - Bucky always tells him that he’s about seventy years too far in the future, and it really feels like it. He’s been classically trained in the arts, does a little boxing on the side as exercise, and it really rankles him to see all the kids hooked up to electronic devices as if it is their life support.

He can’t really understand most of the kids that he teaches, and the art can’t really reach them. They’re all plugged in, and he’s not.

***---***

He’s marked Tony Stark to be a problem child the moment the kid had sauntered into class. Perpetually late and the boy doesn’t even try to act like he’s not bored. He sleeps outright in class, and all the upper management says is to let the boy be. Steve can’t fight the heir to the multi-billion Stark Group.

Jane Foster is worlds different from Tony, and Steve cannot understand why the two of them are friends. It’s probably due to the fact that she’s quiet and studious that Stark always seems to be talking her ear off when Steve sees them together. But she’s wearing a small smile, managing to fit in small yet firm sentences that seem to send Stark into a second of silence.

***---***

Peggy smiles at him over coffee, and Steve can find it in himself to let go of the problem, “She and him sound like you and Bucky when you were younger, you know. One always the listener and the other always blathering on.”

He wants to protest, but she doesn’t give him the opportunity, “Maybe you should see it from their point of view. Tony Stark isn’t ‘just a kid’, you know. He’s probably being groomed for succession, and it can’t be a walk in the park if he’s required to be in school as per regulations.”

He gets the sudden urge to sketch Peggy Carter in this moment - she’s forever giving him another aspect of the world to consider all over again.

***---***

The delivery on his doorstep is a medium sized box, and opening it reveals a gleaming STARKtech headgear, the systems hook-up and a notebook with some of Peggy’s handwriting.

He plugs everything in as in the instructions, and starts the system up. The low hum begins as he sweeps his thumb over the last sentence:

**_See you at nine, Steve._ ** _P._

***---***

**_< <Logging in. Please wait.>>_ **

**_< <Welcome, STEVE.>>_ **

**_< <Please set your notification preference.>>_ **

**[Ready to DIVE?] <YES  /  NO >**

He isn’t quite ready, but he’ll be late if he doesn’t swipe at the ‘Yes’ button soon.

***---***

The _Dark World_ is stunning. Peggy’s laughing at him every time she shows him something amazing - her fingers push his slack jaw up every time.

Steve thinks that he’s fallen in love with art all over again. The quality of verve in the rendering of the virtual world is astounding. Her hand is still remarkably soft in his even, in this world.

***---***

The library is the next stop during his free time during the day. He’s always gone straight for the classical arts section, but today he heads straight toward the digital section. He’s missed out on a lot of things in this virtual era.

And there, in the corner, Steve sees Tony and Jane poring over e-tablets and classical books whilst Pepper does her own work.

It really is another side to everything.

***---***

**< <Logging in. Please wait.>>  **

**< <Welcome, STEVE.>> **

He’s ready to take notes, this time.

His next class will be vastly different.

***---***


	6. Definition

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A teeny snippet while I'm away for the weekend. Cheers!

Tony’s gone to retrieve some parts from storage for the project, and Jane’s catching up on some ‘techie’ terms with JARVIS. The A.I. had insisted on it, seeing that she’s a part of the team now.

“JARVIS, define ‘physical non-immortal object’.”

|| _One moment, Jane. I am processing the DW archive._ ||

|| _According to the definition in the Dark World records, the term is used for perishable items that can interact with the physical world, and can be affected by aforementioned interaction. Common examples would include item drops, and objects that are not under the ownership of another entity in the Dark World, player or NPC_.||

“Right… got that. Thanks, JARVIS.”

|| _You’re welcome._ ||

Tony announces his presence by clipping his shoulder on the door and spilling most of the contents of the box on the floor.

***---***

She’s on standby as the contingency plan tonight; Tony will be trying out the new ExHD resolution headgear. The headgear is bulky - there are a few extra cables to support JARVIS for real-time data collection. JARVIS will be the ‘backseat driver’, A.I. systems piggybacking the neural response system instead of monitoring the headgear to system feed.

Right next to Jane’s hands are the emergency kill switch and a powerful mini fire extinguisher.

The light on Tony’s headgear slowly dims, and Jane jumps to her feet.

He begins to stir, and the groan that rumbles from his chest is sluggish and worrying. She moves to his side, and helps him sit up, “Tony! You okay?”

|| _I catalogued a jump in neural response time with the new settings, but that could be traced to the increase in synapse activity. Vitals are normal, with heightened levels of adrenaline. Scans show signs of exertion and fatigue._ ||

“‘Signs of exertion and fatigue’?I feel like a train wreck, JARVIS.”

|| _I will use those exact words to describe your condition the next time, sir._ ||

***---***

**< <Logging in. Please wait.>>  **

**< <Welcome, JANE.>>**

Jane suppresses a gasp - Tony hadn’t been kidding when he said that logging in with the new gear would be ‘intense’.

The clinging shadows in the corner of the room are that tiny little bit more defined, and the cotton under her fingers has a scratchy quality that she’s never noticed before. There’s the creak of the floorboards underneath as she stands from the bed.

She slides the curtain open, and watches the hustle and bustle of the branch beneath her. It’s only then that Jane realises that she is Lucid-Dreaming, because reality means that she does not have a rented room about a thousand feet from the ground.

She checks out of the room - she won’t be returning to the inn for some time yet.

She’s going to Svartálfheim today.

  
***---***


	7. Glitch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's one for the Monday blues. We're getting close.

The world blinks out, and Jane gathers her scattered mind before moving. She regrets the choice a thousand times as she sits up.

|| _Welcome back, Jane._ ||

Tony is right - she _feels_ like a trainwreck. Her muscles feel jittery and uncoordinated, and the movement is enough to make her nauseous. She feels like she could throw up to feel better, but even her stomach muscles don’t feel up to the task.

“The last train just left. You should sleep over tonight,” Tony’s hand on her head is a soothing sensation.

Tony’s had a room prepared for her during the ExHD experience, and JARVIS has already informed Eric, so Jane just accepts the offer.

***---***

It’s hard to imagine that Tony eats a _healthy_ breakfast, seeing as the genius eats the greasiest possible choice for lunch all the time, but he has a salad. It’s the same as hers, right down to the glass of...

“JARVIS?”

|| _Yes, Jane?_ ||

“What’s the…” there's no nice way to fully describe it.

“- the incredibly vile looking mashed-plant-innards-in-a-glass, I think Jane and I would like to ask.”

|| _What you experienced last night was a high amount of neural activity - overstimulation of the nervous and cardiovascular system. I have determined that your brains have transferred the neural effects of stress to your muscular system. The ‘plant innards’ as you call it sir, is a cocktail designed to introduce antioxidants into your system. It has also been proven to increase red blood cell production and subsequently oxygen transport through the bloodstream. It will combat your ‘train wreck’ aftereffect from the ExHD, until we can recode the neural interface from the data I’ve collected._ ||

Tony’s swirling the drink as JARVIS explains, and the green leaves clumps of fibre along the surface of the glass. Jane makes a face as Tony downs it in one gulp.

“Did you manage to find your portal?”

“No,” Jane’s hunt for her individual portal had left her wandering the forests of Álfheim for too long.

Svartálfheim isn’t exactly a tourist spot in the _Dark World_ \- many avoid Svartálfheim, because it isn’t friendly for party raids. There are unique portals scattered across the forests of Álfheim to the land of the Dark Elves, all keyed towards random individuals. A party would have to split up and regroup, and without a local guide it could easily turn into a mass tragedy.

***---***

** <<Congratulations, JANE. You have leveled up to LEVEL 37.>> **

**[Upgrade SUMMON?] <YES  /  NO>**

**< YES>**

**[Upgrade INVOKE I?] <YES  /  NO >**

**< YES>**

_SKILL LIST:_

**1.** **HEAL -** Level 20 (Max)  
 **2.** **IATRIC -** Level 3 (Prerequisite: Max HEAL)  
 **3.** **BARRIER -** Level 15  
 **4.** **INVOKE I -** Level 19  
 **5.** **INVOKE II -** Level 0 (Prerequisite: Max INVOKE I)  
 **6.** **SUMMON -** Level 3  
 **7.** **BLAST -** Level 5  
 **8.** **SIPHON -** Level 18  
 **9.** **(Empty)**  
 **10.** **(Empty)**

The gilded light of Álfheim is hardly visible - Jane’s wandering the edge of the maps on the fourth day. She’ll have an entire catalogue of aches and pains after this _Dive_ , but its a weekend starting tonight. JARVIS has an exercise plan outlined for her to improve her condition, and Jane’s made plans with Pepper to use the Stark company gyms tomorrow.

Jane sighs. She’ll give up trying to find Svartálfheim for tonight, and focus on leveling up - she’s one level away from reaching [INVOKE II], which means stronger minions to fight for her.

***---***

There’s an ache behind every muscle, but her body needs to keep up with her brain. There is the pressing  need to keep fit, but Jane still shudders at the taste of raw chlorophyll.

 _She can’t take it anymore._ She slows to a stop, and hops off the treadmill. Jane’s huffing up a storm, but Pepper’s still going strong at a frightening pace.

“I can’t,” she tries to control her breathing, “I need a break.”

Pepper smiles at her, setting the pace a little slower, “The Dive takes a lot outta you huh? I got a horrible episode of motion sickness with the first ever headgear, and if Tony claims that his own version to be ‘better than ever’, I think it’ll be ‘worse than ever for me’.”

Jane smiles, “His exact words were, ‘I feel like a train wreck’, but he’s improved the neural interface by leaps and bounds.”

“Better you than me, honestly. The ‘techie’ jargon is too much for me,” Pepper comments.

They’re all snarky-couple to the outside world, but all their friends know that that’s not all to it.

They’re a match in every way possible, Jane thinks. Tony’s the brain behind the technology, and Pepper’s the brain behind the company front.

They’ll go a long way, and they’ll take the Stark name to the top with them.

***---***

**< <Logging in. Please wait.>>  **

**< <Welcome, JANE.>>**

Jane takes a step, and feels the ground give way, her strangled yelp barely registering through her panic as the darkness swallows her up.

***---***

It's nearly pitch dark, but it's not the STARKtech malfunctioning - there are motes of light swimming in her vision, and there is still the sensation of touch. It's chilly in here, whatever place she's fallen into.

The options panel lights up (it’s a relief), and Jane trails her fingers on the screen to call up her location.

**< <You are in SVARTÁLFHEIM. Coordinates: UNKNOWN.>>**

Well, at least she’s where she wanted to be - though she’s got to map out the new territory.

She does an [INVOKE], and calls up one of the tinier creatures for their bioluminescence. It lights up for her, and Jane sees nothing but a pathway hewn into solid rock nearly too narrow for her to walk through.

She takes a deep breath in, and begins the journey

***---***

The more she walks, the more she is sure that this isn’t an actual part of the Svartálfheim map - she’s trudging in some part of the data highway equivalent in the system itself. She thinks that she’s fallen through some patch of eroded data straight from Álfheim into Svartálfheim.

Still, the highway that she’s in will lead her to some part of Svartálfheim that she can safely exit the game from, and retrieve the bug details from the data log for JARVIS to fix.

She doesn’t expect the blood curdling scream that echoes in the tiny walkway.

***---***


	8. Unknowns

The screaming chills her to the bone. It’s the sound that she only hears in movies - desperate, tortured, desolate. It rages down the walkway, the echoes floating back in fragments.

The dark of the tunnel is oppressive, and Jane tries again.

**< <You are in SVARTÁLFHEIM. Coordinates: UNKNOWN.>> **

The messages that she’s sent have not been replied yet.

The system can’t echo her location back to her, so logging out now means that she’ll be in limbo the next time she logs in, waiting for Tony to rescue her. The light from her little minion is fading, so Jane renews the spell. She sucks in a lungful of chilled air, and begins down the tunnel to the source of the screaming.

***---***

Maybe she’s not Lucid-Dreaming. It could be a nightmare. Her little glowing scout pauses - it has found other ‘lifeforms’. It’s not a battle summons, and acts mostly as a decoy, so Jane watches as it edges closer to the branching pathway.

It edges forward and disappears out of her vision. It isn’t dismissed by any attack, but Jane sends another one just in case. Her minion scouts return shortly, unscathed, and Jane moves forward into the pale light at the end of the tunnel.

It leads to a space that seems to have no true boundaries - the walls have disappeared, and the tiny path leads on around a pillar of some sort in the middle of the space, a gaping abyss on both sides. The path through the gaping abyss is thankfully short; Jane just has to _not fall_ for the thirty meter walk.

The nervousness eats away at her, and her minions reach their shelf life just as she reaches the pillar. The lights fade, and Jane reflexively reaches for the stone pillar.

Everything goes black, and Jane curses as she restarts [INVOKE I].

The room is… markedly different. The abyss is gone. Her hand reaches for the flooring outside of the previous pathway - it’s solid. She tries the navigation system again.

**< <You are in SVARTÁLFHEIM. Coordinates: UNKNOWN.>> **

She stifles a curse.

Another scream tears through the air - it’s closer now, raw and visceral. Jane swears she hears a choked sob after it. There’s a growing fear that it isn’t a _programmed_ background sound.

She gets to her feet, and follows her little scout out the door.

***---***

**< <Your ALARM is due in FIFTEEN minutes.>>**

She can’t log out here.

Jane continues.

***---***

_Oh gods._

It doesn’t feel like a game anymore.

There’s an avatar strung out over a wide stone slab, and hovering over him… is the largest (and oddest) serpent she has ever seen to date in the _Dark World_. She cannot find out its attributes until she engages the monster, and Jane watches in horror as the snake hovers over the avatar.

It’s too real, the way the avatar tries to curl up into himself despite the chains. The whimper. The scream that rends the air has Jane ready to run. Some part of her brain tries to persuade her that it’s just game, that she should log out and report this to Tony… that there shouldn’t be this absurd degree of pain and suffering; there are pain buffers that the system has for real-life players. Even a stab through the heart would be nothing more than a sharp (but bearable) pain before fading. Of course, the death of a player would mean that he would be revived in short order.

_But the NPCs are not capable of such… raw emotion. What if… this is real?_

He _howls_ as the serpent drips venom onto him, and Jane cannot take it anymore. She’s got to do something, at least. She’d like more information, but she can’t stand by and watch this anymore.

She casts [SIPHON] and [BARRIER] at the same time, and sends her daemons on the offensive. The attack rouses the attention of the feathered serpent, and the fact that the name hovering over its head is **< <Lesser Quetzalcoatl>> **scares her even more. The larger beast could be here as well.

There are three HP bars over the feathered snake, and from what she can see, the snake is melded to the floor near the slab. All Jane has to do is to stay out of striking (or spitting) range, and keep a close eye for any lesser monsters that the serpent could possibly summon. With every damage she deals, she’ll siphon a fraction of the damage as boosters to her HP and MP.

She takes a deep breath, and steels herself for a long, drawn-out battle.

It’s a boss monster, but there’s no way out except to move forward.

***---***


	9. Waking Dream

It is cold.

Not quite alone, but he might as well be.

He feels it - the slow eating away of his insides.

With each spatter of venom that falls from his jailmate and destroyer, another part of him is erased. This feathered and fanged beast, also chained as he is, is what will kill him.

***---***

The initial strikes of venom are stabs of bone-rending pain, but what follows after the pain is the waking dream. Sometimes, he dreams that the feathered serpent is a giant hawk, and he is grasped in its claws, flying over the land.

Other times, the serpent seems to be his faithful companion, hovering in and out of sight. In his lucid hours, he knows that the serpent needs time to recharge its venom.

This time, he watches as a feathered dragon attempts to fight a beautiful seiðkonur. She is as beautiful as she is swift, casting spell after spell.

He hopes that she will win, as his world fades to black.

Maybe the cold will cease, then.

***---***

  
  
  
  
  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Waking dream (as defined by Google) - an involuntary dream occurring while a person is awake. Might also refer to hallucinogenic experiences.


	10. Fight

She’d asked Tony before, and he’d confirmed that the self awareness doesn’t go that far… yet. There are adaptive algorithms that only the most independent of A.I. NPCs have (like Heimdall), and even then there are restrictions in place - the Three Laws of Robotics. But the Dark World is a universe made from virtual reality, and so the three Laws had been adapted to suit so.

Neurological harm. Breach of privacy. Those derivative Laws are the center of every core of the programs, stored in standalone data banks and safeguarded by STARKtech Quantum Encryption .

Impossible to hack, because one would have to destroy the entire A.I. just to get to its core.

***---***

There’s a tiny sliver of red in the Lesser Quetzalcoatl’s final HP bar, and Jane feels the strain of the neural fatigue more than ever. She’s exhausted her entire hoard of potions, and has been surviving on the grace of her [SIPHON].

She watches as the serpent falls with a roar to the floor, and watches as its colourful feathers ignite into black flame. A flurry of screens pop into view, and Jane is momentarily overwhelmed.

**< <Congratulations! Boss Monster DEFEATED.>>**

**< <LAST ATTACK Bonus received. CARVED DAGGER.>>**

**< <Congratulations, JANE. you have leveled up to LEVEL 38.>>**

**< <Congratulations, JANE. you have leveled up to LEVEL 39.>>  **

She dismisses the screens with a wide sweep, eyes still on the rapidly blackening body. Her brain is still on overdrive, and it takes her a moment to process the initial reason for battling a monster way out of her safety margin and level bracket.

**[SUMMON casted.]**

There are items scattered around its body, and Jane executes [SUMMON], watching as the items fade out from the floor to appear in front of her. She places them into her inventory.

**< <Congratulations, JANE. You have an item drop.>>**

**< <Congratulations, JANE. You have an item drop.>>**

**< <Congratulations, JANE. You have an item drop.>>**

She rushes to the stone slab, feeling a tiny bit more relieved when the avatar - it’s a he, under all the dirt and rags - seems to be still breathing, though unconscious. There are open wounds everywhere (no grisly innards, just a pink-red blank crisscrossed with darker red).

**[HEAL casted.]**

Nothing.

**[IATRIC casted.]**

It closes the wounds, but only slightly. Jane does repeated castings - how much damage does this guy actually have? - but she eventually gets the major damage fixed. He’s still unresponsive, and Jane walks around the stone slab to puzzle out the restraints.

The chains and cuffs are melded into the stone slab, which means that she’ll have to try and break them. She picks an angle where the blow won’t glance off and hit him. The knife glances off, and the screen pops up.

 **< <IMMORTAL OBJECT>>**, the system tells her.

It’s impossible. She can’t break it to free him, and there’s not even an administrator’s console in this place. There’s a deathly fear that the monster will respawn right away, and Jane paces.

C’mon, think! Immortal objects. Permanent, non-destructible, non-perishable… non-interactive, unbreakable. Unlike physical non-immortal objects… the realization is slow, but like the dawning sun.

She suddenly remembers JARVIS’s definition. And Tony’s description of the rigidity of the system.

 

_perishable items that can interact with the physical world…_

_can be affected by aforementioned interaction..._

**[SUMMON casted.]**

The body vanishes, and then reappears in front of her. He’s not an inventory item, so Jane stumbles when he falls almost directly onto her.

***---***

The end of the tunnel is right up ahead, and Jane hopes for it to be somewhere she can safely log out and return back to the real world.

He’s dead weight, and Jane is barely managing to haul him. She’d have a snowball’s chance in hell if she still had her inventory of potions with her; there’s a maximum weight that each character can move, dependant on their physical characteristics, abilities and class.

**< <You are in SVARTÁLFHEIM. Coordinates: NORTH ABYSS IV, 10-23.>>**

She sets him down onto the ground, and wraps his pale fingers around a warp crystal. He disappears, and then Jane follows after him.

***---***

  



	11. Return

**< <Welcome to Minuscula, JANE.>>**

Svartálfheim is a forbidding place, by first impression. It is made of shadows and ash-grey architecture, and the background music in the game is sombre. Even the NPCs have an expression darker than their cobalt-black skins. There are tiny scaled creatures that quietly snarl from the holes littered about the stone pavements, and Jane hopes that they are not Svartálfheim’s version of cockroaches.

Jane barely manages to haul John Doe to an inn. Common sense would dictate that she wait for him to wake, but this is a virtual world, and she doesn’t know what to do. He’s an oddity in this world, Jane thinks, as she trails a discerning eye over his pale skin and dark hair.

He’s dressed in rags, so Jane runs through her inventory for item drops that are solely for male use - useless to her. No hint of a weapon, too. She throws out a dagger - even a beginner would be able to use it. She barely gets them out onto the foot of the bed before a blaring red notification pane pops out.

**< <EXTERNAL LOGOUT PROTOCOL IN PROGRESS>>**

**< <COUNTDOWN: 59s>>**

It’s a failsafe for even the oldest STARKtech headgear - her command screen is locked.

***---***

Everything seems like a blur. She’s almost afraid to move right now, not because of the world of pain that she’s due to feel, but because of the voices arguing quietly above her head.

JARVIS is a tinny voice in the room as well - || _It appears as though that Jane is conscious, sir._ ||

Tony’s voice is like steel, “Get up, Jane.”

He’s _extremely_ furious, and Jane slowly fights the urge to jump to her feet and _run_. She opens her eyes, and sees Tony - pale and sweaty and scared as hell. Pepper is there, right above her head.

Pepper is the one who helps her up, and presses a glass of water into her shaking hands, “We lost your signal, Jane. JARVIS will record your interview. Tony, we need to talk.”

Tony levels a glare at Pepper, and the glance that he gives Jane means that the matter is not over.

***---***

They’ve walked far enough such that Jane won’t be able to overhear them even if Tony raises his voice.

“ _Tony._ Calm down,” is what Pepper says, and she sees his jaw twitch, “she’s okay now.”

“How am I supposed to calm down? She disappeared off the game grid for _six hours_. She died in the middle of it. For that one second. Her brain signals should have kept her alive, but it failed her. The headgear kicked in. She died. How would I answer to Erik? That the daughter of his best friends got lost in _Dark World_ limbo and died because of me?”

He’s shaking. Tony’s finally been able to meet Jane after so long - the car accident that took his parents away, his subsequent fall off the world  for so many years… She’d first met him then, in a bad condition - got caught up in his inheritance hoohah. She’d convinced him to join the international school, and by chance Jane had been transferred in too.

“How am I supposed to tell her that she died for that _one second_?” his voice is broken as he turns to her. She reaches out, and he steps closer.

His hug is a little too tight, and Pepper cannot do anything but draw him closer.

***---***


End file.
